He walked toward the windows but stopped short.
Something was wrong.
The inside man was standing beside the locked door with his arms at his side, watching nothing but that odd little boy who couldn’t be worth half this trouble.
“Who else is here?” Diamond asked.
“Nobody.”
Diamond tipped his head, listening. But the huge engines were roaring, accelerating them into a long turn that would carry them farther over the reef before they could start for home. He heard nothing but the rumbling, and maybe he was wrong. Maybe. But a deep breath caught a familiar scent, and stepping toward the man, Diamond asked, “Where’s King?”
“Sitting in his big chair,” the guard said, grinning. Then he looked from side to side, asking, “Why?”
Several closed doors led to smaller rooms. One door exploded to slivers, and already running, King ran straight for the guard. No sound accompanied the creature. Two long strides and he lifted his arm, and the guard turned, reaching for the locks on the suite door. He barely touched one knob when King reached him, and the man started to yell, dipping his head while putting up his other hand to protect what couldn’t be protected. The armored fist struck him at the back of the skull, and King’s other hand came up under the chin and yanked back hard, and a man who was bigger and trained to fight was suddenly limp and empty-eyed, lying on a fancy carpet made from the weavings of a spider that lived only in the darkness at the top of the world.
“Is he dead?” Diamond asked.
“Or alive,” said King. “Either way, he won’t help you.”
Diamond looked at the alien face. It wasn’t as strange as before. He expected two mouths and the odd eyes and that living armor shrouding what wasn’t at all human.
The airship was finishing its turn, the engines no longer pushing hard.
King approached.
Diamond didn’t move.
“They’ll discover that I’m missing,” King said. “And my father’s going to know where I went.”
The human boy put his feet apart. “The Archon is your father?”
“Sure.”
Diamond nodded.
“But you’re not his son,” King said.
The human kept nodding.
“Do you know what I’m telling you? Can you understand me?”
Diamond was barely listening. He was full of questions, and the first question to jump out was, “Do you remember things from before?”
“Before what?”
What did he mean exactly?
“You mean back when we sitting inside that monster?”
Diamond shook his head. “No. Before the corona. Do you remember any of that earlier life?”
The armored boy stared at him. The eating mouth spat, and then the other mouth said, “You’re crazy.”
“Maybe I am. How would I know?”
“What do you remember?”
“A woman, a human woman. And there was a man too. They were like me, and there were a lot of people like me.”
“You recall this?” King said doubtfully.
“I think so.” Diamond nodded, looking at his feet.
“There is no ‘before,’ ” King said. “Do you know what we are?”
“No.”
“Then I’ll tell you.”
“All right,” said Diamond.
“Build anything—put together a ship or house or anything—and there’s always pieces left behind,” King said. “That’s what you and I are. Leftovers. The Creators made us along with the world, and we were extra pieces. They let our bodies fall down near the sun where we got eaten, and we’ve been waiting all of this time, waiting for our chance.”
“Who says that?”
“My father knows it.”
Diamond studied the scaled chest and broad arms and then a face that was more familiar each time he looked at it. “I don’t think the Archon’s right.”
With a quick trained motion, King punched with his left fist. Diamond felt the blow and dropped to the floor, the breath beaten from behind his ribs.
“My father is very, very smart,” King said.
Diamond couldn’t speak.
What may or may not have been a laugh emerged and failed. Then King gave him one little kick before saying, “But I’m even smarter than him. And you’re probably a lot smarter than your parents too.”
Diamond found just enough breath to say, “I feel stupid.”
The light changed abruptly. Emerging from the reef’s shadow, The Ruler of the Wind found the late sun blazing up from below. Some kind of minor magic turned the glass windows dark. The room grew only a little brighter, and Diamond looked at the feet in front of him. He studied his feet and King’s, and then King said, “My brain is incredible. Nothing is like it, except maybe yours.”
“Why is it incredible?”
“The first man that had me was a slayer, like Merit. He didn’t know what I was until he got home, and then he got scared. Scared and so he got drunk and tried to kill me. I was a monster, he decided. He used knives on me. He cut into my chest and tore out my hearts, but I grew new hearts and my chest healed. Then he chopped off my little legs and my arms and new ones came out of the stumps, which made him angrier and more scared, and humans don’t do well when they’re scared.”
“What happened next?” Diamond asked.
“Oh, he got even drunker, and he fell asleep.”
Diamond didn’t know what it meant to be drunk.
“That’s awful,” he said.
“Don’t talk,” King said. “I’m telling the story.”
The boy nodded, letting time run along.
“Anyway, the slayer had a woman friend. I don’t know why, but the woman felt sorry for me. So she fed me milk and nuts, and I grew big again. The slayer slept for a long time, and then I was mostly back where I was before. And when the slayer woke and figured out what happened, he beat her hard and kicked her outside and went back to trying to kill me.
“I was an abomination. We’re both abominations, and the man knew that he’d get in trouble for all kinds of reasons. So he put my head into a vice, face down so he didn’t have to look at these eyes. I was a baby, and he fixed me down good and used a big power drill and fat steel bits to cut a fat round hole in the back of my skull. He cut faster than I could heal and got through the bone after breaking the first three bits, and then he took his hardest, best bit and tried to force it down inside my brain.”
Diamond touched the back of his own head.
“Human brains are soft and wet and gooey. Did you know that?”
“No.”
“Shake their heads hard, and they forget who they are.” King bent his knees, putting his face close to Diamond’s face. “My brain isn’t gooey. This body is strong, but it isn’t half as tough as the brain inside my skull. That stupid man tried to kill me. He used that spinning piece of hard steel to cut at something that can’t be cut. He burned up the bit and all the others, and his drill overheated and died, and he shot me in the head with every bullet in the house, and he even used one of the big slayer harpoons. I was this baby with my skull ripped open, and he was ready to put a fourth harpoon into his target. Three others had already busted. But he was drunk again and angry and trying to aim, and that’s when the girlfriend brought the police to his house, and that’s how my father found out about me. The police told the Archon. And my father has kept me safe ever since.”
Diamond watched the alien face—the little flicks that the eyes made and how each mouth moved in its own fashion.
“I bet your brain is the same as mine,” King said.
“Maybe it is.”
“Pretend it is,” King said. “That means nothing can kill it. But that doesn’t protect you from everything. What if some sharp knife with muscle behind it were to rip that head off your shoulders, and what if that head and your body were cut into little, little pieces, and your brain and everything else was dropped out of an airship running fast over a place where no person can go? What if you were thrown away and swallowed by a thousand coronas? Do you believe anybody would ever find enough of your bits to make you live again?”